Posted on 01/09/2016 7:35:03 AM PST by soakncider
TRUE HISTORY OF THE WAR FOR SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE IN THIS AGE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS there has never been a greater need and greater opportunity to refresh our understanding of what happened in America in the years 1861-1865 and start defending our Southern forebears as strongly as they ought to be defended. There is plenty of true history available to us. It is our job to make it known. All the institutions of American society, including nearly all Southern institutions and leaders, are now doing their best to separate the Confederacy off from the rest of American history and push it into one dark little corner labelled "Slavery and Treason". Being taught at every level of the educational system is the official party line that everything good that we or anyone believe about our Confederate ancestors is a myth, and by myth they mean a pack of lies that Southerners thought up to excuse their evil deeds and defeat....
(Excerpt) Read more at shotwellpublishing.com ...
Pajamagirl DOODLE! is kibitzing with another Pajamagirl, rockrr, on a War of Northern Aggression thread.
SQUIRREL!
Thank you for the reply. I acknowledge that there is racism in the world. But just as today, the politicians’ opinions and objectives may not have aligned with most of the people purportedly represented. But even so, do you think that is justification for state-sponsored murder, destruction, dislocation, and persecution of millions of innocents? If so, where do you draw the line? If not, do you still hold the smug opinion that northern armies were the heroes; righteously killing whites, blacks, dogs, and cattle, and burning homes, crops, and whole cities?
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Good grief. That's not a realistic portrayal.
I'll quote Sherman from 1864:
You also remember well who first burned the bridges of your railroad, who forced Union men to give up their slaves to work on the rebel forts at Bowling Green, who took wagons and horses and burned houses of persons differing with them honestly in opinion, when I would not let our men burn fence rails for fire or gather fruit or vegetables though hungry, and these were the property of outspoken rebels. We at that time were restrained, tied by a deep seated reverence for law and property. The rebels first introduced terror as a part of their system, and forced contributions to diminish their wagon trains and thereby increase the mobility and efficiency of their columns. When General Buell had to move at a snail's pace with his vast wagon trains, Bragg moved rapidly, living on the country. No military mind could endure this long, and we are forced in self defense to imitate their example. To me this whole matter seems simple. We must, to live and prosper, be governed by law, and as near that which we inherited as possible. Our hitherto political and private differences were settled by debate, or vote, or decree of a court. We are still willing to return to that system, but our adversaries say no, and appeal to war. They dared us to war, and you remember how tauntingly they defied us to the contest. We have accepted the issue and it must be fought out. You might as well reason with a thunder-storm.War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are.
Closer to our own time, there's the odyssey of Eugene Genovese from Marxism to sympathy for the Confederacy. Kirkpatrick Sale (who's still around) moved from SDS radicalism to CSA-sympathizing Lincoln-bashing via Vermont separatism.
A lot of people on the hard left don't have much liking for Lincoln, who after all, was a Republican and a supporter of industrialization and corporations. Neo-confederates and leftists parrot each other and also compete in attacking Lincoln's racial views, though for different reasons.
There are many accounts of atrocities by the northern invading army.
If the hatred of Lincoln was almost universal, why did he win the 1864 election in a huge landslide?
But Booth made him a martyr and the North now had a salve to sooth their shared guilt over destroying the Constitutional republic.
I doubt there was any shared guilt over destroying the republic. I think there was a tremendous regret and sorrow that it took an armed and bloody conflict to preserve the union but they would not have perceived it as their fault. Don't confuse regret and sorrow with guilt.
I have always thought it ironic that Booth did immeasurable damage to the South. Lincoln had the political strength, vision, and desire to heal many of the wounds the war opened. When Johnson took over, he too weak to stop those who wanted to punish the South over the war. In all likelihood, many of the abuses which occurred during Reconstruction won't have started under Lincoln.
My father gave me that book as a gift in the early ‘60s. The text is by Bruce Catton. I have poured over it many times. Is the version that you are looking at the original huge hardcover that has the jacket with the crossed flags of the North and South? Mine is still in its original jacket and on my top shelf.
Factories and removal of tarrifs that protected northern industry at the expense of the South. In many ways the men of that time period were wiser than today, especially in regards to commerce and trade. The South realized it was being isolated as a sort of agricultural vassal state to the Noth. The biggest mistake they made was in underestimating badly how much the North was willing to lose to retain the Southern States. They most likely assumed a few quick battles and the Yankees would give up- a cheap victory. Even by the end of the war Yankee casualties outnumbered Confederate.
This was a good strategy for the South having a more capable force at least when it came to leadership and tactics as evidenced by the first year of the war. I wonder if they would have changed strategy if they knew it would be a war of attrition?
An alternative would be to ignore the Tarrifs, smuggle in as much industry as possible and force the Yankees to make the first move. And the first industry would need to be the ability to build ships that were blockade busters. The sad thing is this option may have led to industrialized farming sooner, making slavery less a part of the economic issue. It would still be a cultural issue, however.
The fall of Atlanta saved Lincolns ass.
We tend to be slaves (no pun intended) to the idea that it's 'always better when things, families, countries stay together and work it out' ... but the fundamental issue was not worked out ... the south was ethically wrong about slavery, right about seceding from a tyrannical government.
Once the war starts, then you get all sorts of unethical and greedy stuff going on from both sides. War is a wonderful time for arbitrage.
"But even so, do you think that is justification for state-sponsored murder, destruction, dislocation, and persecution of millions of innocents?"
Absolutely not. But the 'State Sponsoring the Murder' will always believe it's the 'State Sponsoring Justified Killing for the Benefit of Man and High Principles' ... and, that's just what mankind does, and will always do. It's just one outcome of the original sin, or, mankind's powerful ability to delude himself. The wrongdoer is either sociopathic and doesn't care if what he does is wrong (doesn't have right or wrong,) or, his pride tells him what he's doing is right because it's for the greater good.
Lincoln himself - probably a do-gooder - blinded by his pride. But a thousand interests, blended together, almost all of them delusion, sometimes appearing as good, sometimes appearing as bad, always appearing as good or bad depending on who's doing the doing and who's doing the done-to, power the actual war and everything leading up to it and everything following.
When an ocean meets a river, and the tide comes in and out and that spot moves, that location where there seems to be a 'war' ... appears as an actual 'thing' ... but it's just water being water, force being force. One wouldn't say the salt water is right or the fresh water is right. I'm not arguing for moral relativism. I'm just saying if one seeks an answer to the end of the suffering caused by war, and one seeks that answer in ethical questions about who was right or wrong and how to stop wrong deeds, then there is only one conclusion ... that there need be an organization of men to stop it. And what does that give you? It gives you your next government, which in a few years will be on either the more or less immoral side of the next war against either its own people or another government.
War is baked into man, because delusion is baked into man. The wise man simply says 'I am deluded.'
Given a choice, though, I would have fought for the South - fought against the power of centralized government (or any concentrated power,) and having won, would like to think I would have been a southern abolitionist, but had I grown up in the south, probably would have actually believed there was nothing odd about these darker men working for free. Probably most of the darker men thought that too. Probably too, I would have sought profit from the war if possible.
The more I wrangle over the rightness and wrongness of the acts of men and myself, the more I'm convinced that riding a roller coaster with the hopes of actually getting somewhere, simple because the ride is compelling, is itself a delusion.
But faced with taking up a gun right now for either side, I believe a southern victory better for those who live on this plot of land, and the entire earth, and, while the Union was apparently preserved for a couple centuries, wasn't the thing that will no doubt eventually, and is currently, destroying the US, left to live ... Centralized Power ... the ONE thing the founders sought to avoid at all costs.
Not sure that's a direct answer - I am waxing way too philosophical this morning and perhaps subjecting everyone else to it. In my opinion, the Left suffers from a far more morbid case of delusion than the right. And in my opinion, the North was then more deluded than the south.
Interesting way the North CHOSE to preserve the Union with double canister and mine balls. In fact there was no existential threat the the North, they did not have to fight the Civil War. The USA would have gone on to perhaps full blown Communism with 38 states and without the South "holding it back".
After conscription was passed the stakes became about money I guess, but still the lion share on both sides were volunteers.
Nevertheless, his victory suggests that Lincoln was far from universally hated at this time. If he was truly hated, people would still have voted against him. Would you become a fan of Obama if he were to somehow defeat ISIS? The fall of Atlanta and the ultimate defeat of the Confederate forces was just a matter of time and everyone knew that by mid-1864.
The Democrats in their infinite wisdom in 1864 ran a pro war candidate, McClellan, for President and teamed him up with a rabid copperheed VP. His name escapes me right now.
The South realized it was being isolated as a sort of agricultural vassal state to the Noth.
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How in the world did the South get the Fugitive Slave Act passed?
Though my sympathies are Southern, i admit that there were and are valid moral arguments to made on both sides, i.e. abolition vs. state sovereignty. The focus of the book however is to defend Southern culture and the Southern people, the institution of slavery not withstanding. Abolition of slavery could have been achieved, without the devastation of war, and without destroying republicanism.
Difficult not to entirely agree with you here.
Nevertheless, if Lincoln were so universally hated, it shouldn't have mattered. On paper, McClellan was a strong candidate. It is doubtful that the Democrats actually had someone who would have beaten Lincoln in 1864.
BTW, George Pendleton was the Democrat VP candidate. He is very forgettable.
I would argue that the union as formed, has not been preserved. What we have now is less than the Constitutional Republic as founded, due to an all powerful central government. Which has known little restraint since the war.
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